Social Media and Learning Styles as Correlates of Senior Secondary Students’ Chemistry Achievement in Abeokuta, Ogun State, Nigeria

Abstract

Students spend most of the time they should have spent on reading on social media, meanwhile social media should be a tool for students to enhance their learning styles and improve their achievement in chemistry. Literatures revealed that both learning styles and social media affect the academic performance of students either positively or negatively, however little or no attempt has been made to investigate the effect of both on the academic achievement of students in chemistry. This study thus investigated the effect of learning styles and social media on the achievement of senior secondary school chemistry students in Abeokuta south local government of Ogun State, Nigeria. It is ex post facto research design. The population of study is all the public secondary schools students in Abeokuta South local government area of Ogun State. Random sampling was used to select five schools while forty SSIII chemistry students each were purposely selected from the schools to give a total of 200. The students responded to three research instruments which were Chemistry Achievement Test (CAT) (reliability = 0.79), and Social Media Usage Scale (SMUS) (reliability = 0.85). Five research questions were answered and data was analysed with descriptive statistics including graphical presentations. Use of Facebook (57%) was prevalent among the students. Participative learning style (mean = 15.88, mode = 17) was found to be the style commonly used by chemistry students. Both male and female students (t ₍₁₉₈₎ =1.65, p> 0.05) were found to be equal on the use of social media. Students usually shared more personal features than sharing ideas or knowledge. There was no significant relationship between the use of social media and students’ achievement in chemistry. Science students, especially chemistry students are enjoined to devote some of the time they spent on social media for academic development rather than on social affairs mainly.